Buddy: Harnessing the power of the internet

✍ Scribed by Douglas Boulware; John Salerno; Nina Zumel; Michael Manno

• Book ID: 102867209
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 576 KB
• Volume: 23
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0884-8173
• DOI: 10.1002/int.20249

✦ Synopsis

The Internet has become a way of life. In the past, when someone wanted to perform research he or she would go to the library, and proceed to the card catalogue to locate a book or to a set of periodicals for magazines. Today we sit in front of our computer, launch our Internet browser, bring up a search engine, and perform various searches by entering a simple keyword, phrase, or more complex Boolean expression. The Internet can be a great asset by significantly cutting the time-consuming burden of finding relevant documents/papers; however, how do we know where and what we are searching? How many times do we perform a query and get irrelevant documents? In this article we investigate today's search engines, what is meant by coverage, and what metasearch engines bring to the table. We also look at both their abilities and deficiencies and present a capability that attempts to put more power at the finger tips of the user. This capability is what we call "Buddy.